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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23474599">In the Heat, They Lived</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/acertainslantoflight/pseuds/acertainslantoflight'>acertainslantoflight</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M, Pre-Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but they're also so mad, just like a lot of love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-04-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-04-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 06:53:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,141</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23474599</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/acertainslantoflight/pseuds/acertainslantoflight</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Summer of 1993, Remus is alone in a house that is more of a prison, until a dog scratches at his door.</p><p>Or: AU where Sirius goes to see Remus after escaping from Azkaban.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sirius Black/Remus Lupin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>68</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>In the Heat, They Lived</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic has been such a labour of love for me.  I can't even remember when I started writing it and there were so many times I wanted to give up.  But it always remained a story I wanted to tell and I'm finally happy with it.  I hope you are too.</p><p>Much love, thank you for reading.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was a muggy July, producing deep heat that moved through the cracks in the worn wood walls and floors of an old and melancholy cottage on an English coast. No one went to the beach, even in the summer, it was too dreary, making any brave tourist settle into a disappointed sombreness. This state of gloom was not lost on one of the few permanent residents, although Remus Lupin was not about to blame the town’s less than pleasant ambience for his perpetual sadness.</p><p>The house felt even more claustrophobic than normal from the heat, making Remus want desperately to leave, but he had nowhere to go. Having been fired mere days ago (nowhere close to a surprise) he was left to swelter in his prison of a home, trying in vain not to think of the first summer he spent there. All year round, the house swam in memories of a former life but the summer was when they became the most unbearable. The first summer he spent there was the only time Remus had been happy between these walls. Now, he cast cooling charms every five minutes, until his arms covered with Goosebumps and he could spend at least a few moments in a different time of year. He would leave if he could. Escape to Europe or Asia or South America, anywhere that wasn’t plagued with ghosts and an infestation of unspoken words. Somewhere where his lungs didn’t shrivel up and his heartbeat didn’t slow to a mild stutter every time he forced his empty shell through the door. It had been twelve years and his body still felt like it was in need of medical attention just from sitting on his own fucking couch. He cursed his inability to keep a single job, preventing him from getting the hell away from there. He should just suck it up and take the position at Hogwarts he thought. So what if the thought of it turned his body to cold custard and his mind to a lightning storm? He needed the money. When did he become this weak? He knew the answer of course but would rather not dwell on it, instead, he sat under the flickering lounge room light, eating dry, stale crackers he had found at the back of the cupboard, snapping under his teeth like bones under a full moon.</p><p>He focused on this in lieu of anything else, the snap of the crackers, the lack of moisture in his mouth, the calls of night birds, searching for prey, in the thick, outdoor air. Because of this deep, consuming thought, it took Remus a moment, or perhaps longer, to notice a new sound in the thrum of noise, scratching nails against wood, a whimpering, inhuman nails, inhuman whimpering. Dog noises. They were quiet, as if trying not to draw too much attention, but grew louder the longer he tried to ignore them. He hadn’t realised how fast his heart was beating, a tempo building up a panicked rhythm, his breathing, quick bursts of air, swimming into the rapidly returning warmth. Fuck.</p><p>He was being stupid, it was just a dog, you would think he’d never heard one before. Still, it was scratching at his door. What kind of a person would he be if he didn’t help? And if he took his wand, well that would just be for precaution in case it was rabid. The floorboards creaked as he stood, protesting against still being in use long after they should have been replaced. The doorknob was warm, mirroring everything else in this godforsaken house, Remus held it with as much surety as he could muster, with bones rattling as much as the thing they were wrapped around. He breathed in through his nose and didn’t let it out. Just a dog. The door moved unwillingly, as it always did, but this time it felt like a decision, a protection. Exactly as Remus knew there would be, a huge, imposing black dog sat on the stone path, mosquitoes buzzing around its ragged, dirty coat. It pawed at the ground with anxious hope. Remus closed his eyes for a second, overwhelmed with such intense feeling, he felt as if he were drowning in a roiling ocean, jagged rocks inches away from his frail body, waiting impatiently to crush him. He breathed out. He should shut the door. Put up protective charms. Drink a glass of brandy; go to sleep and pretend to himself this was dream when he woke up. Of course he didn’t, because by now Remus knew there was no point in trying to untie himself from Sirius Black.</p><p>He didn’t trust himself to speak, at least not yet, beetles crawling inside him and clogging his throat. He stepped aside instead, opening his tomb to the person who killed him. He watched as the dog loped tentatively inside, claws scratching against floorboards, nails scratching against heartstrings. It was limping but clearly trying not to. Remus needed a moment. He moved to the kitchen trance-like, feet as heavy as the heat surrounding him, as if they wanted to dig into the rotting floorboards and prevent him from going anywhere. The tap squeaked when he turned it on, waiting for the water to run clear, eyes glazed over, feeling so little or maybe he was feeling so much that he had blocked it all out. Sirius in his house, right now. He had imagined and dreamt and wanted this moment so many times for so long that now he didn’t trust it to be actually happening. He splashed water over his face, savouring the feeling of it pooling in his hands and then the droplets trickling over his skin. Refreshing at first but soon making him shiver as the drops turned to tiny spiders running down his cheeks and across his neck. He imagined them burrowing into his pores and quickly found a tea towel to crush any semblance of relief he might have had.</p><p>Sirius in his house, right now. The more he let the words settle in his head, the more anger began bubbling in the pit of his stomach, through his rib cage, into his heart. Sirius, a murderer, in his house, right now. As he felt the anger build in his throat and in the tips of his fingers and under his tongue he became more certain that he would kill him. He steeled himself, curling his fingers, picking up his wand with a determination he wouldn’t let fizzle. He hated him. He deserved to die for what he’d done. He repeated these words to himself as he walked back to where he’d left Sirius, he didn’t trust himself to think of anything else. Except there was not a dog in the living room anymore. There was a man. A man who wore the face of the person he loved and it was not so easy to kill a person you had once held and kissed and needed and wanted and entangled your whole soul with. This was not that person though, the hallow face and ripped fingernails and matted hair told Remus that. Except when he looked in Sirius’ eyes, where he expected to find an insane, crazed look, one that had been strewn across the cover of every newspaper, wizard and muggle as of late, one to assure him he didn’t know the monster in front of him, he didn’t find that look at all. Instead, he found one he recognised deeply. It was a look of hurt, of grief, of anxiety. He recognised it from a dorm room bed on nights so quiet the lack of sound dug into both of their bones. He recognised it from a room in a manor house when the words and the slaps and the curses that had been dealt to him stole the air from his lungs for the rest of the summer. He recognised it from days and weeks and months after a full moon at sixteen years old, when any word spoken could turn into a weapon and make them bleed till they were dead. And he recognised it from this exact spot, twelve years ago when the weight of a war on twenty-year-old shoulders could not be carried anymore and they hadn’t spoken in weeks and they wanted to scream until their throats bled. That was the look of a man he loved.</p><p>Loved, but did not love now, Remus reminded himself, it didn’t matter if he didn’t look like a maniac, he didn’t look like a maniac when he was part of a terrorist organisation either. They were engaged in a kind of solemn staring contest, staccato breaths emptying into the air, each so deeply unsure of the other. And then Sirius said the first word he had uttered in years that wasn’t the mad mumblings of a prison cell. ‘Remus.’</p><p>Remus felt the word run through his veins, infecting his blood with the soft, wobbly syllables, giving his body the same feeling. He wouldn’t let himself succumb to it though. His wand was at Sirius throat in an instant. The smell of him instantly hitting Remus’ nose, death and salt water and blood, so pungent it made him nauseated. Half of his focus was on not touching Sirius.</p><p>‘How fucking dare you.’ He had thought about what the first words he would say to Sirius would be if he ever saw him again time after time. Now, they came out of him in a rush. ‘I don’t know why the hell you thought it would be a good idea to come here, because you know I’ll kill you right? You know you’re fucking delusional to think I would let you live.’ He was saying the words so why wasn’t he taking the action? He should do it before he looked at Sirius’ stupid, torn up face for too long and he couldn’t force the words into his mouth. He was shaking.</p><p>‘I know.’ The words broke out of Sirius, like shattering glass. ‘Shit. Of course you would. I. I would too.’ Remus could hardly hear him over the blood rushing in his head and the buzzing in his ears. He dug the wand deeper into the skin at the base of Sirius’ neck. <em>Do it do it do it.</em> Ice-cold hands were gripping his spine. He would never admit it, but maybe he was waiting for Sirius to give him a reason not to, maybe after twelve years, he still didn’t think he would do anything so horrific. It had never been a question of if he was capable of it. Remus knew Sirius had the ability to do what he had been accused of, however fucked up that was. But would he actually do it? Remus truly didn’t know.</p><p>But then he thought of Harry, how that was really what this was all about to Sirius. Remus had no idea why he would come here when his real goal was to murder his own fucking Godson, surely this would only slow him down? He was completely nauseated, disgusted with not only Sirius, but with himself. Here was a murderer, who was out for more blood, blood that he had a responsibility not to let be spilt. How a human being could be this evil, he did not know.</p><p>‘Stop it. Stop. Don’t make it seem like you understand. You’re so fucking deranged. God, wasn’t what you already did enough for you? You seriously don’t think you’ve already caused enough damage? Now you have to come after a <em>kid</em> too?'</p><p>Sirius faltered, both their hearts following his example. ‘What?’</p><p>Remus moved away an inch, their proximity unbearable, he kept his wand poised, choking on nothing. ‘Don’t do this to me.’ ‘I swear to you Remus, I don’t know what the hell, you’re talking about.’</p><p>‘Oh because I have any reason to trust anything you ‘swear’ on.’ Remus shifted his eyes away, looking at Sirius was getting more difficult with every passing second. Those ghostly eyes wouldn’t stop staring at him and Remus could see the complete lack of life, of soul in them, he felt the hurt of it somewhere deep in his chest.</p><p>‘I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about. What’s going on with Harry? Is he okay?’</p><p>‘Oh don’t fucking act like you care.’ Remus scoffed. ‘Are you trying to get me to tell you where he is? Is that what this is?’</p><p>‘’Remus, shit, you’re scaring me. Why would I ever want to hurt Harry?’</p><p>‘What the fuck, Sirius? I don’t know maybe because you literally said you did? Because you killed his parents and now you want to finish the job?’ But Sirius looked genuinely confused and the boiling blood in Remus’ veins was slowing down to a simmer and he had rarely felt so scared.</p><p>‘I didn’t do it.’</p><p>Remus stepped back instantly, that sentence like cold water in a hot desert. He had no reason to believe it, really, he was almost certain it wasn’t true, but this was something, and he couldn’t help but be relieved. ‘Sounds like something someone who’s about to die would say.’</p><p>Sirius looked like he couldn’t get air into his lungs, the weak moonlight filtering through opaque, cracked windows making his skin even more sallow, his eyes even more hollowed. He looked like something awakened from the dead and it broke Remus’ heart to see. The silence, the heat, it was crushing him. He felt panic build in his chest, stomach, head and the threat of it made him panic even further. He was scared and this goddamn house wouldn’t stop creaking and he was going to faint and the birds wouldn’t stop screeching and the bugs wouldn’t get out of his stomach and Sirius wouldn’t stop standing there with hell in his eyes and he was so, so scared.</p><p>‘Jesus, just <em>say something</em>, stop being dramatic and just tell me why the fuck I should believe you.’ He was breathing hard, wand clenched in his hand like a lifeline, knuckles white.</p><p>Sirius seemed to get the message that Remus wasn’t looking for any bullshit right now. No, ‘I loved them.’ No, ‘how could I ever do something like that?’ No, ‘I’m not a monster.’ For once, he let Remus’ head stop spinning, he said things how they were. ‘It was Peter.’</p><p>Silence. Deadly, murderous, silence. It was like being in a freezing, black ocean but he wasn’t trying to swim to the surface, he wasn’t even letting himself drown, he was stagnant, paused in time. ‘Don’t lie to me. If nothing else, at least give me that courtesy.’ He almost said ‘please’ but Sirius didn’t deserve that.</p><p>Sirius was struggling to form words; his voice was breaking with them. ‘Oh God, I’m- I’m not, please, I need you to believe me.’</p><p>Fissures were forming along Remus’ skin, down his bones, splitting his heart. ‘Explain it to me then, stop for one goddamn second and explain it to me.’</p><p>Sirius took a breath, and even the air he breathed sounded like cracking glass, sharp and raw. And the blood in Remus’ veins stopped flowing for a moment as he took in his reality. Here was the thing he has wanted, ached for, for so long, finally about to be given to him. And from Sirius’ very first words, there was a chill running down his spine, a burning in his heart that he had never experienced before.</p><p>The words of Sirius’ story were a thousand ice picks pricking Remus’ skin unrelenting, painful. Everything about him felt numb, body, mind, heart. It shouldn’t make sense but it did. If Peter were really dead, wouldn’t they have found his remains? Why didn’t Sirius get a trial? How could someone you love turn out to be someone so unlovable?</p><p>It felt almost traitorous to accept a new version of the same story that had been playing itself through Remus’ head for the last twelve years. But this made sense. This is why the words plastered on every page of every newspaper and into every person’s mouth, never fully settled themselves into his mind. They would stay there for a week, a few months, a year, then be uncourteously pushed away by doubt. He should have stopped being surprised when Sirius changed his whole life in all of five minutes, in a sentence, in a touch; like an earthquake, disrupting every part of him, but you couldn’t get used to earthquakes no matter how often they happened.</p><p>He was nodding, ever so slightly, ‘okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.’ It was the only word he could force out of his mouth, anything more felt like it would break his jaw.</p><p>‘You believe me?’ Desperation, intense, unnerving.</p><p>‘Yes. Yeah I believe you.’ Relief was flooding Sirius’ eyes and he should be the one crying but it was Remus who let go. He couldn’t remember the last time he cried. He didn’t cry when he came an inch from death during a duel in a smoke infested street and he thought it might have been better if the curse had hit him. He didn’t cry when he woke up to the right side of an empty bed for the fifteenth day in a row and it hit him that Sirius and himself hadn’t spoken for twenty-five days longer than that. He didn’t cry when he watched seven children die at the hands of forces so much bigger than themselves as he lay immobilised on the ground, powerless. He didn’t cry at the news that his best friends had been murdered in cold blood, or the idea that he would never hear James’ laugh again, would never feel his arms around him and he didn’t cry at their funeral, where he didn’t make a speech and could barely get himself to feel guilty about it. In all those moments he was catatonic, not unfeeling but feeling too much to let himself actually experience it. He cried now though. He didn’t notice it for a long while as heartbreak at Sirius’ words and everything else they entailed washed over him and he suffocated on the thick, weighted air. It filled his lungs and wouldn’t pour out and his chipped nails were digging into the couch he didn’t realise he was sitting on and the house was growing smaller by the second and he was crying. Maybe that was what gave Sirius pause or maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to keep talking. Either way, silence was buzzing through the air and digging under their skin and it made Remus want to rip his flesh off but at least some of the air was escaping his chest.</p><p>Peter sold Lily and James out to Voldemort. Peter was a Death Eater. Peter was the traitor. Peter was the traitor. Peter was the traitor. They had spent so much time fearing each other, not wanting to get too close, tearing themselves apart, limb from limb, heart string from heart string and Peter was the goddamn traitor all along. And still, Remus felt guilty. Because why the fuck was he relieved? One best friend killing the people you love should not be any better than a different best friend doing it. But, he supposed, when the latter had burrowed their way so deep into your chest, into your every thought and want and need. So deep that you felt like you carried a part of their soul in your lungs and heart and fingertips, then of course it was better if someone else was the monster, even if you loved them too.</p><p>Familiar but all too unfamiliar hands were on his arms, his back, holding him, keeping his head just above the water as they always had, or had, before they let him drown, absolutely, thoroughly. He did not deserve to be comforted. He was not the one who needed it most. And yet he couldn’t keep himself from letting his tears wet the fabric of Sirius’ thin, holey shirt and he couldn’t keep himself from sobbing in a way he only ever had at four years old under a full moon. He was angry with himself, he shouldn’t let himself be given solace by the person who had destroyed him in the first place but he felt so utterly out of control of his body and he knew this was a kind of core tendency by now. One of the keys to his survival that his instinct forced him to omit to. Let Sirius Black pick up the pieces of your broken self and stitch them back together. Let him hold you and you will not die.</p><p>But being touched in this way reminded Remus of all the years he had spent devoid of any touch at all. How for the past twelve years it had felt like someone was pulling off his fingernails, one by one, repeatedly. How many times he thought that if this wasn’t death it was close to it, or maybe death would be better. He was reminded that Sirius <em>knew</em> Remus needed him to survive and he still made the choice to leave him. And it <em>was</em> a choice. So he had to fight the instinct.</p><p>‘No, no, no, no, no, I can’t do this.’</p><p>Sirius moved away from him quickly, this was new territory to work out, to wade through, nothing could be held too close.</p><p>Still, ‘you can’t do this?”</p><p>Remus gave him a hard look, trying to melt the warmth growing in his own chest. ‘You need to eat.’</p><p>He didn’t wait for Sirius to reply, instead he moved to the kitchen, suffering minor regret at having to boil the kettle for his last packet of pot noodles. He wouldn’t be able to afford electricity soon anyway. It’s not that Remus had never envisioned this situation before but in his mind he could forgive without hesitation, or maybe it was that Sirius could apologise without any. However, fictionalised versions of themselves rarely responded to things the way they did in the real world. He tried to sort through his head to figure out what he wanted to happen now but came up with nothing but white noise.</p><p>So he focused on the food. But Sirius was in the next room and still held a mind controlling effect that Remus thought would cost him energy he didn’t have to escape from. He imagined arms wrapped around his waist, sliding down his arms, encircling his fingers, trailing up his torso, curving around his mouth. He gasped for air.</p><p>Why was moving so goddamn difficult? Just moving from the kitchen back to the lounge room felt to Remus like he was trekking through a thick layer of mud. Mud that continued to cling to him when he sat across from Sirius, where he had sunk to the floor.</p><p>‘Thanks.’ Sirius said, as Remus handed him the chipped plate of food, half cold and unpalatable as it was.</p><p>Remus watched Sirius as he ate. The circles under his eyes were so intense; it looked as if he had been punched. It took half a minute for him to work out how to use a fork. His eyes flicked around in panic. He looked like prey. Maybe he was. Not fifteen minutes ago, Remus had been crying into this man’s chest, now, there was a barrier separating them that he didn’t know how he would be able to break through. That thought caused a pain so deep in his chest he thought for a second that he would die. The scrape of the fork against the plate felt too loud in his ears.</p><p>‘I don’t know what to tell you Remus.’</p><p>‘What do you think I need to be told?” A warm wind blew through the open window, the floor creaked.</p><p>‘Something to get you to stop looking so scared of me. Or like you hate me. I didn’t do it.’</p><p>‘Doesn’t mean I didn’t get hurt.’ This was a war zone. Remus knew that. They had been reunited for all of one hour and Remus was already creating a battlefield. This was why he couldn’t stand himself.</p><p>Except Sirius didn’t have enough fight left in him. Not now. ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to blame me for.’ His voice broke. They were so full of guilt that their voices couldn’t contain it.</p><p>‘Are you serious?’ A blank face was staring at Remus with blank eyes. ‘You fucking left me Sirius.’</p><p>Sirius’ fingers twitched, his eyes gained the tiniest bit of emotion. ‘I didn’t have a choice.’</p><p>He shouldn’t be doing this. He should be agreeing, comforting, letting Sirius shout or cry or smash something. He should not be arguing when arguing could so easily shatter them. ‘You didn’t have a choice? Of course you had a choice. You could have made this so much easier for both of us.’</p><p>‘What? So you wouldn’t have gone after him? You would have just let the person who murdered James and Lily go on with his life?’ There was steel growing in Sirius’ voice now.</p><p>‘<em>No</em>.’ Remus took a breath but all he breathed in was dust from the air outside. Just the mention of James and Lily’s names tore a piece of his heart off, it had ever since they died, soon, there would be nothing left. ‘I’m saying you could have told me, you could have said something so I could help or at the very least not have to live with the guilt of loving you.’</p><p>The house was stagnant for a second. They sat, looking at each other. It dawned on Remus that he was breathing the same air as Sirius and that felt like something akin to a miracle.</p><p>‘Remus, I just- we weren’t-.’</p><p>‘You can’t tell me you didn’t love me.’ Remus willed the heartache away.</p><p>Sirius looked like he’d been stabbed in the chest. He had escaped from somewhere as close to hell as it was possible to get and he was here, where Remus was killing him and guilt bubbled through his veins. But maybe this house was hell too. ‘Of course I loved you.’ Sirius faltered. ‘I don’t think there’s been one moment of my life since I was fucking thirteen that I haven’t loved you but we weren’t even on <em>speaking</em> terms. We weren’t <em>in</em> love. We didn’t share that. But I was supposed to be thinking of you then? I was supposed to what? Come and collect you so we could murder our friend together?’</p><p>It didn’t feel fair that Sirius was allowed moments without Remus in his mind. But not much else about Sirius’ life was fair, so maybe it was okay trade. He was right though. Loving Sirius at twenty-one didn’t feel right. They were so scared of loving each other, so scared of being hurt. The first rule of the war was not to show weakness and caring about Sirius felt like exposed skin that could be punctured without difficulty. Like any second Remus would find himself bleeding out because he hadn’t put up enough guards. It didn’t work of course. Sirius was far too deep in all the cavities of his heart that trying to pick him out didn’t work. So Remus had been bled bone dry and it had all been for nothing.</p><p>Remus wanted to be saying <em>yes of course you should have thought of me, of course you should have told me of course of course of course,</em> but he only sighed. ‘You hurt me, that’s all I’m saying.’</p><p>Sirius echoed the sound. ‘I wasn’t trying to.’</p><p>‘An apology would be good.’</p><p>‘Fuck Remus, I didn’t <em>mean</em> to hurt you.’</p><p>Remus wondered how this had turned into his fault. How could he be both the victim and the perpetrator of his own murder? ‘Can’t you take some goddamn blame for once? ‘I think that night was one of the only times I wasn’t thinking about you since we met.’ The words scraped the air. Nails on the chalkboard of the house.</p><p>‘Is that an excuse, an apology or an attempt at romance?’</p><p>‘I don’t know. All three?’</p><p>This was a game Remus didn’t want to play. He was tired of it, completely exhausted. ‘Stop pretending you don’t know how to talk to me.’</p><p>Something crowded Sirius’ eyes that had not been there before. He dragged a hand through his long hair; Remus noticed the way it caught in the mats. ‘Fuck, you just don’t get it do you? I wasn’t thinking outside of that moment. I wasn’t thinking of how your life would change or my life would change or anything. And yeah that was stupid of me and yeah part of me wishes I had of stopped for a second but most of me just wishes I did it then. And I think if I know you at all, which maybe I don’t but I really think I do, then I’m pretty sure you would have done the same thing.’</p><p>‘Okay, fuck, I know, okay? I know, I probably would have, but how does that make it okay? Why does that mean that it’s not allowed to hurt?’</p><p>‘It is, of course it is, I just don’t underst-‘</p><p>‘How can you not understand what you did to me? How can you not get that every single support I had in my life was taken from me at the exact same second? Yeah, a lot of that was Peter’s fault, but you could have stayed. Every single day for the past twelve years I didn’t have hope that I would see the sunset because how is a person supposed to live like that? With nothing. And still, I loved you and felt so unbelievably guilty for that. And all I could think about was that either I was so awful of a person that the only one who could love me would be someone so deeply fucked up, or you had just tricked me into loving you and thinking you loved me just so you could ruin me more completely. And you know who would normally talk me out of thoughts like that? <em>You</em>. And thinking about <em>that</em> just made me feel even worse and through all of this, there was the knowledge that all of my friends, everybody who had ever loved me were fucking <em>dead</em>. And I couldn’t stop loving them either and it hurt so badly and I had <em>no one</em> and you could have given me someone but you chose not to <em>and that is your fucking fault</em>.’</p><p>Silence buzzed around them, swallowing the air, and pushing down their throats. Remus wished for once, the silence wouldn’t have to be painful, that it would just let them be.</p><p>‘Maybe I’m just trying to think of an excuse because anything is better than me hurting you.’ Sirius looked at Remus properly as he said this, and maybe breathing wasn’t such a hard idea to comprehend anymore.</p><p>‘Yeah?’ was the only word Remus’ brain managed to collect the letters together to create. Now that he had let all of words those run out of him, and into Sirius a calm was building in his bones, slowly, sinking in, letting him feel it softly and gently. Now, he felt open to Sirius, and not like he was letting himself be dangerously vulnerable, just that he could listen to him without his blood heating up a hundred degrees.</p><p>‘Yeah.’ The soft inflection in Sirius’ voice, the feeling, was the only thing that outwardly separated him from the dead. He loves, and therefore he lives. ‘I can’t cope with knowing I fucked with you that much Remus. It’s so much easier to blame your suffering on Peter because how could I do that to you when I love you so much that I feel like it’s killing me? And it’s easier to just think that I was entirely right because if I made the wrong decision, that’s too much of my life to lose for no reason.’</p><p>The idea of that. That he would have suffered so much for an incorrect decision, the slip of a moment, shifted a part of Remus’ resolve. Because he couldn’t cope with that either. None of this was black and white, he knew that. No decision Sirius could have made that night would have been the right one. But hurting for something felt better than hurting for nothing at all. And the love, the love, the love. Maybe he shouldn’t be thinking of it, he should ignore the fog of it, clouding his judgement, but he couldn’t prevent it from sticking to him, and he couldn’t prevent himself from believing in it.</p><p>‘All I need is for you to care, you know. I can cope with whatever other bullshit you do if you at least <em>care</em>.’ The house creaked as if in agreement, or perhaps protest, but certainly reminding them of their bodies, of their proximity, of the fact that they were here, in a real space, together, rather than floating in the ether.</p><p>‘I care so much, you don’t even know.’ And that, Remus thought, was why he went after Peter in the first place. He cared too much to let him live. He cared too much about him and James and Lily and Marlene and Dorcas and every victim of that war. And it wasn’t fair to hate him for that if really he loved him for it, if that was why he fell in love in the first place.</p><p>‘I can’t stop being angry at you now Sirius, I’m still pretty fucking furious but I understand. I didn’t stop loving you even when I didn’t understand, at all and there didn’t seem to be anything <em>to</em> understand so I don’t think it would be fair on either of us to try and force myself to stop loving you now.’</p><p>A choked sound came from Sirius, a sob and a scream and a laugh all at once and there were few times Remus had wanted, <em>needed</em> to hold him more. His chest was splitting, ribs cracking, heart torn open and he felt like he was watching the same thing happen to Sirius. He felt sure, if only for a moment, that their wounds could stitch each other together, if only they were close enough.</p><p>Unlike when Sirius was holding him, Remus could feel every inch of contact between them. On every patch of skin, galaxies were being formed. Gardens were sprouting from the tips of their fingers, their clothes were forming into clouds that spun around them and held them together. Where their lips touched there was pure heat, but this heat was not stifling, it did not hold him captive as the humidity he had been living in for the past twelve years had done. It freed him, and he allowed himself to be freed.</p><p>And at some point, unknown to even time itself, they broke contact and they looked at each other like they were real. Because here was the person they had started to believe was made only of dreams and fantasies and memories and self-created history. And now they were palpable again.</p><p>‘I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you.’ Sirius was saying, real words that floated around Remus’ head, letting him take them in and begin to believe them again. And it wasn’t a betrayal to Remus to let himself love Sirius back.</p><p>Maybe a house did not have to be prison, maybe he could let it be emancipation. His anger had not evaporated, there was still so much he had to talk about, to yell about, to cry about. He didn’t know what was supposed to happen now, or was going to happen even if it wasn’t. But he couldn’t take this away from himself. He couldn’t steal his own happiness away, not when it had been lost for so long. He was going to guide it back. He was going to feel alive, if only for now. He knew this could not last, really, that Sirius couldn’t stay here, there was an undecided future he had to deal with, a future completely against him. They could not ignore Peter, who was out there, alive and dangerous and evil. But tonight, didn’t feel like a part of that future at all, and Remus wanted to live in it and feel its warmth and its comfort and its vitality for as long as he could.</p><p>And here was something that did not happen even in either of their dreams. They smiled, at each other, and the fact of that action made them smile harder and they breathed and breathed and let their hearts beat, without feeling guilty.</p>
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